"I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is to escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought; this desire may be compared with the townsman's irresistible longing to escape from his noisy, cramped surroundings into the silence of high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity. ... Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. That is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Motivation
46 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Motivation →
Related Quotes
"There is a desire deep within the soul which drives man from the seen to the unseen, to philosophy and to the divine."
"Motivation is a battle for the heart, not just an appeal to the mind. Passion is always an expression of the soul."
"In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasi…"
"We must not inquire too curiously into motives…. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed w…"
"There are two things people want more than sex and money . . . i.e recognition and praise."
"In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions."
"Dreadful will be the day when the world becomes contented, when one great universal satisfaction spreads itself over …"
"Bhikkhus, the lazy person dwells in suffering, soiled by evil unwholesome states, and great is the personal good that…"
"See a person's means … Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character?"
"The human mind is always inexorable in demanding a motive for all human actions. It is only himself that each man per…"